RARER BRITISH BIRDS. 
21 
WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL. 
Loxia Leucoptera. Gmelin. 
The White-winged Crossbill appears, from the account of 
Wilson, to be of much rarer occurrence in America than the 
common Crossbill, Loxia Curvirostra, though found frequenting 
the same places at the same seasons. We are told in a work 
lately published,* that this bird inhabits the dense white-spruce 
forests of the fir countries, feeding, principally, on the seed of 
the cone, which the form of its bill is particularly adapted to 
extract. In the same work, also, we are told, that it ranges 
through the whole breadth of the Continent, and, probably, up 
to the sixty-eighth parallel, where woods cease ; though it was 
not observed higher than the sixty-second. In winter it retires 
from the coast into the interior. An account of a specimen of 
this bird, shot near Belfast in January 1802, in the “Linnaean 
* The “ Fauna Boreali Americana,” by Messrs. Richardson and 
Swainson. 
